Well, I almost made it. Thanks to those that stopped by the side of the road to help. There are a great group of Toyota enthusiasts on this board and I appreciate your attempt to help.

My brother came up and we towed the truck back to my house. I could hear all kinds of abnormal humming of the fuel pump. I bought a new Carter fuel pump and filter and installed it today and it seems to run great again.

I hope to catch the next run with you guys and thanks again for your help

Sorry you couldn't make it Mark. I saw your sweet pick up briefly as I sped by before the main group. It must have been just after your pulled over because your hood wasn't up and I wasn't sure what the deal was or if you were even in our group. Glad it's running now. Sorry I didn't stop.

It was a great day on the trail with the kids on Father’s Day. Thanks for leading Jeff. We only had about 7 rigs and everyone was built and experienced so we made it to the to the top just after 2pm or so. Not too many people on the trail either. Everyone made it through the obstacles real well.

The Rock Garden was slightly easier IMO. It wasn’t all dug up by hundreds of rigs yet and was quite fun. Zepp took the rock garden for the first time in a while and had a good time with it. It was a bit slippery with the previous rains so it was hard to keep your line. He slipped off his line several times and got hung up and had to winch once. It was fun seeing him romp “Charlotte” through there though. I was able to crawl through slow enough to stay on my lines for the most and made it pretty clean. Good fun!

I guess I don't know how to insert captions ahead of each picture. Oh well. And thanks for taking to video of me in the garden Marco. I'll have to re-size it down and post it.

It was indeed a fun run, no breakage, no rolls, everyone made it safe and sound, that's all good!

With only 7 rigs, well prepared, and good drivers and no trail traffic to speak of we made excellent time. Rock Garden by noon (which is always the good goal for timing) and back to I-70 before too much traffic. Scott led us out a different way I have never been on which took us to the I-70 service road just upstream from Idaho springs which saved a bunch of time. Thanks Scott! And he goaded me on to going straight through the garden. More on that later.

Due to the recent rains there was considerable mud (by Colorado standards) to slick up our tires for the rocks. But first some photos:

Here's Marco making his move in his V8J60. I was trying to get some shots on the portrait view that might make it to the cover of Toyota Trails, but the composition here wasn't working in terms of cropping off the botom of his tires.

Right about here is where I got good and stuck. No matter which line you planned to take, the sticky mud seemed to twist me around to a line that wasn't working. I did manage to get up onto that rock, only to slip sideways and land squarely on anything but tires.